Photo by Matt Rose
A weaver without a loom: the image evokes openness, a sense of possibility that might thrill some and overwhelm others. For Asheville’s Susan Finer—a former textile artist—leaving behind the constraints of the loom’s grid led to a whole new career as a painter and a world of possibility as an artist.
“The grid of the loom was safe,” she says. “It provided structure.” Within it, she was able to experiment with pattern and color. But as her work evolved, she found herself confident enough to move away from it, gradually turning to mixed media and then, about eight years ago, to painting. The result has been a series of works that at first draws you in with its appealing and eye-catching color, but that then takes you beneath the surface to texture and complex compositions that strike a chord on a deeper, almost subconscious level.
Looking at Finer’s Stratiforms series, you can almost imagine the canvas as a piece of cloth stretched on a loom. In fact, she does incorporate threads into the layers of paint in her work, but in a much freer form than she ever had with a loom. There is a consistent, but not quite regulated rhythm to the pieces, with color variations adding depth and movement. “There is still an underlying grid,” she says, “but now it’s unraveled and skewed, allowing for the unexpected.”
In her Configurations series, there’s still an echo of textile patterns—the hint of African mud cloth in her Jungle Music piece, the bold graphic of a Gee’s Bend quilt in Puzzle. But her saturated colors and fluid shapes and patterns provide depth and intrigue beyond what can typically be achieved with fiber. What initially seems to be a pattern might be a form or a figure. “It’s almost a teasing relationship her work has with the viewer in that she depicts forms that are on the verge of becoming discernible, but stopping just short,” says Chris Foley, director of Asheville’s The Haen Gallery, which represents Finer’s work.
Finer says that her process isn’t really that intentional. “I don’t wake up in the morning with a plan. It’s more surprising and mysterious than that.”
The layers evident in her work evolve as a result of the materials she uses, including threads and pumice gel mixed in with paint. The roughness gives the surface the appearance of having a “history,” a weathered look that evokes familiar textures of nature, but not necessarily its colors. Her amped-up sense of color is one of the elements that really sets her work apart, and paired with the texture, it creates a rare complexity.
“Susan brings an urban sensibility to her work while also being rooted in the natural world,” says Foley.
That combination of styles might be attributed to Finer’s background and experiences. A native of New York, she grew up visiting the Met and MOMA, drawn to the mid-century expressionists such as Klee, but also to Mayan and other indigenous art forms. She loved making art as a child, but didn’t approach it again until her twenties, and then stuck mostly to “functional” woven items rather than creating art for art’s sake. But picking up the paintbrush took her in directions she’d never explored before. As she experimented with materials, she started to find that images just emerged, and if they were recognizable, it was probably due more to the “collective unconscious” than to any intent on her part.
If all this sounds a bit heady and intellectual, that’s actually not what comes across in Finer’s work, and that’s part of the beauty of it. It’s much more instinctive and emotional than it sounds on paper, and that’s what makes it so accessible. “Her paintings have an almost primitive raw power that’s refined by balanced compositions,” Foley says. “The response to Susan’s work is always quite personal. Those intuitive, rhythmic and vibrant elements elicit different emotional responses from each viewer. That dialogue between each individual and the work is an integral element to the success of the paintings. I think clients are quickly drawn in by the color and the pattern, and as they spend more time with each piece, the element of ambiguity, the almost recognizable forms, push their intellectual interest further.”
Finer moved to Asheville in 2006 after nearly 25 years in Boston, bringing with her, Foley says, a welcome new energy and metropolitan sensibility to the Asheville contemporary art scene. She was one of three artists featured in a Haen Gallery exhibition last fall and also took second place in the Asheville Area Arts Council’s “Weird, Wild and Wonderful” exhibition in 2006. With a light and airy new studio, Finer says she’s creating more work than ever, weaving together the diverse threads of her experience and unconscious vision into multimedia works that never fail to captivate.
See Susan Finer’s work at The Haen Gallery, 52 Biltmore Avenue, Asheville, 828-384-1341. Visit thehaengallery.com or susanfiner.com.
